iPhone: The New viewer Diary for Measuring Media Consumption?

The Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM), a collaboration between big media and ad agencies, is considering using the device as a meter to record media consumption as part of a new study, According to The Wall Street Journal.

Given the high demand for smartphone – particularly, the iPhone I blogged yesterday, in the new world, it is the iPhone that is poised to be the anchor of a new initiative to measure media consumption that covers the landscape-from TV to digital media delivered through mobile phones and computers.

CIMM is in talks with the Media Behavior Institute on conducting a study that would see 1,000 participants outfitted with an iPhone equipped with a diary application, which could record their location and the media they are consuming every half-hour. The CIMM has a budget of about $1 for the study. Their members include AT&T, CBS, NBC, News Corp., Omnicom, Unilever and Disney.

In the old world, Nielsen recruits viewers who keep diaries and have set meters to track their television viewing.  They have been  at the media measurement business for nearly a century and has been relied upon as the source for TV viewership.

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Here in the new world, the company plans to install internet measurement devices and offering data later this year.  It will be interesting to see how the use of the iPhone for multi-media measurement will impact their business.  Yet again, the iPhone could be the catalyst for change and in the media measurement market…not media delivery!

Although, the iPhone has been playing a part in blazing the trail for measuring media in the digital world,  I am  still curious to see how accurate data collection will be via iPhone.

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